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How to Increase Customer Engagement

Customer engagement is one of the most important elements for a business's growth and overall success. The more engaged your customers are, the more profitable your business becomes. According to a study conducted by Ray Wang of Constellation Research, companies who have improved their customer engagement saw an increase in their cross-selling by 22%, their drive upsell revenue increased from 13% to 51%, and their order sizes increased from 5% to 85%. As you can see from these numbers, having strong customer engagement will increase your businesses revenue.

Although you may already think that your customer engagement is the highest it's ever going to get, the reality of the situation is that you can always increase it. Even the company with the highest customer engagement in the world can still increase theirs - there is no pinnacle. In this article, I will be discussing four simple and easy ways that, as a business owner, you can increase your customer engagement.

Use APIs

APIs stand for application programming interfaces, and are great tools that you can use in order to increase customer engagement. This is because they can give your customer service agents fast and accurate information that they can then use in order to provide excellent customer service. For example, if your business ships goods directly to your customers, and one of your customers wants to know where in the world their good is at any point in time, a shipping API will be able to help. Shipping APIs enable your customer service agents to track where the good is, and provide an accurate answer immediately. This was just one example of how an API can help increase customer engagement, but there are many other different types of APIs that all aid in improving customer service which in turn, will also help improve customer engagement as well.

Set Up an Affiliate Program

An affiliate program is defined as the process of rewarding someone for referring someone else to your business. Setting up an affiliate program is one of the most effective ways to increase customer engagement because it gives consumers incentive to engage with your brand, and it provides potential for you to obtain new customers. There are many different companies who already offer this service for that exact reason.

Be Active on Social Media

According to Statista, 77% of the United States population was active on some form of social media in the year 2018. The same study projects this number to reach 79% in the year 2019. Since there are so many people in the United States who are active on social media, establishing a presence on their would be in the best interest for any business. Being active on social media includes responding to customer comments, regardless if they are positive or negative, and sharing things on a consistent basis. For example, if you are releasing a new product, promote it on social media and ask for people's opinion. If someone asks you a question, has a concern, or has a comment, respond to it. Doing these two things will undoubtedly increase your customer engagement because you are making the customers feel like they are a part of your brand.

Humanize Your Brand

At the end of the day, customers want to feel like they are a part of your brand, and not just a revenue stream for your company. A study conducted by UK-based Trinity Mirror Solutions states that 42% of people distrust brands, mainly because they consider them to be part of the establishment. This means that if you can successfully separate from the establishment and humanize your brand, you will gain consumer trust. Some ways in which you can humanize your brand are by being transparent with your company story, responding to customer inquiries as frequently as possible, and showing your gratitude towards your loyal customers. Gaining consumer trust will almost certainly increase your customer engagement because if people can trust you, they are more likely to engage with you.

In summary, increasing your customer engagement is something that every business should be striving for. If you do not do a good job of engaging your customers with your brand, then you run the risk of losing them as a customer for good.

Nick Rojas is a business consultant and journalist who lives in Chicago and his hometown Los Angeles with his wife. His work often discusses social media, marketing, and branding in regards to small and medium enterprises (SMEs).